An investigation of response competition in retrieval-induced forgetting

Abstract

It has been demonstrated that retrieval practice on a subset of studied items can cause forgetting of different related studied items. This retrieval-induced forgetting (the RIF effect) has been demonstrated in a variety of recall studies and has been attributed to an inhibitory mechanism activated during retrieval practice by competition for a shared retrieval cue. The current study generalizes the RIF effect to recognition memory and investigates this competition assumption. Experiment 1 demonstrated an effect of RIF effect in item recognition with incidental encoding of category-exemplar association during the study phase. Experiment 2 demonstrated evidence of RIF with use of an independent retrieval cue during retrieval practice. Results from this study indicate that response competition may occur outside of the retrieval-practice phase, or may not be limited to situations where there is an overt link to a shared category cue.